Historical Police Procedural

An excavation at the lost gardens of Earlsacre Hall is called to a halt when a skeleton is discovered under a 300-year-old stone plinth, a corpse that seems to have been buried alive. But DS Wesley has a more recent murder case to solve. A man has been found stabbed to death in a caravan at a popular holiday park, and the only clue to his identity is a newspaper cutting about the restoration of Earlsacre. Does local solicitor Brian Willerby have the answer?

1917. The Lotus Hotel offers sanctuary for its exclusively female clientele, attracting the cream of London's society. But a dead body found in one of its rooms is hardly good for business, and when it is discovered that the woman was neither a guest nor a member of staff, the Lotus' reputation as a safe haven is cast in doubt. Inspector Marmion and Sergeant Keedy are dispatched to look into the events at the hotel and soon suspect foul play.

Josephine 'Jo' Fox hasn't set foot in Romsey in over twenty years. As an illegitimate child, her family—headed by her controlling grandfather—found her an embarrassment. Now, she wants to return to what was once her home and uncover the secret of her parentage. Who was her father and why would her mother never talk about him? Jo arrives the day after the Luftwaffe have bombed the town. The local pub has been completely destroyed and rescue teams are searching for the remains of the seven people known to have been in the pub at the time the bomb hit.

Falkenberg, Sweden. The mutilated body of talented young jewellery designer, Linnea Blix, is found in a snow-swept marina. Hampstead Heath, London. The body of a young boy is discovered with similar wounds to Linnea's. Buchenwald Concentration Camp, 1944. In the midst of the hell of the Holocaust, Erich Hebner will do anything to see himself as a human again. Are the two murders the work of a serial killer, and how are they connected to shocking events at Buchenwald?

August, 1940. On the streets of London, locals watch with growing concern as German fighter planes plague the city’s skyline. But inside the famous Ritz Hotel, the cream of society continues to enjoy all the glamour and comfort that money can buy during wartime - until an anonymous man is discovered with his throat slashed open. Detective Chief Inspector Coburg is called in to investigate, ably assisted by his trusty colleague, Sergeant Lampson.

When workmen converting former girls' boarding school Chadleigh Hall into a luxury hotel discover a skeleton in a sealed room, DI Wesley Peterson and his boss, Gerry Heffernan, are called in to investigate. But within minutes they have a second suspicious death on their hands: a team of marine archaeologists working on a nearby shipwreck have dragged a woman's body from the sea. And it becomes clear that her death was no accident. The dead woman's husband may be linked with a brutal robbery of computer equipment, but Wesley soon discovers that the victim had secrets of her own....

When Dr James Dalcott is shot dead in his cottage it looks very much like an execution. And as DI Wesley Peterson begins piecing together the victim's life, he finds that the well-liked country doctor has been harbouring strange and dramatic family secrets. Meanwhile, archaeologist Neil Watson has discovered a number of skeletons in nearby Tailors Court that bear marks of dissection and might be linked to tales of body snatching by a rogue physician in the 16th century. But when Neil finds the bones of a child buried with a 1930s coin, the investigation takes a sinister turn.

When a woman is burned to death in Grandal Field in Devon, it seems like a case of mistaken identity. Until DI Wesley Peterson learns of a legend involving a French woman who burned to death there in the 13th century. And when he discovers that records of a previous excavation on the site have vanished, and that two archaeologists involved in that dig died in tragic circumstances, Wesley starts to investigate the possibility of a link between the legend and recent events.

In 1975, a People's Militia homicide investigator is on a plane for Istanbul when it is hijacked by Armenian terrorists. Before the Turkish authorities can fulfill the hijackers' demands, the plane explodes in midair. Two investigators, a secret policeman and a homicide detective, are assigned to the case.

November 1968. Judy Garland is performing drunk at the Palladium and the city of London is about to catch fire - literally. Summonded to a gas explosion, Detective Sergeant Cathal Breen unearths a shocking discovery beneath the rubble: Mind-bending paintings by Bridget Riley and Peter Blake... and the garroted body of Jacob Pugh, a playboy god in the art world. With Detective Helen Tozer, Breen must infiltrate the artistic demimonde of a volatile and increasingly murderous city.

Florence, October 1966. The rain is never-ending. When a young boy vanishes on his way home from school the police fear the worst, and Inspector Bordelli begins an increasingly desperate investigation. Then the flood hits. During the night of 4th November the swollen River Arno, already lapping the arches of the Ponte Vecchio, breaks its banks and overwhelms the city. Streets become rushing torrents, the force of the water sweeping away cars and trees, doors, shutters and anything else in its wake.

Quebec, 1994. Sergeant-Detective Émile Cinq-Mars is summoned from Montreal to investigate the murder of a prisoner in an experimental women's jail. He knows the prime suspect - he arrested her. But darker forces are interested in Abigail, and Émile interferes at his own peril. For as he'll soon discover, in Lady Jail, nothing is as it seems.

As commander of the River Police, Monk is accustomed to violent death, but the mutilated female body found on Limehouse Pier one chilly December morning moves him with horror and pity. The victim’s name is Zenia Gadney. Her waterfront neighbors can tell him little—only that the same unknown gentleman had visited her once a month for many years. She must be a prostitute, but—described as quiet and kempt—she doesn’t appear to be a fallen woman. What sinister secrets could have made poor Zenia worth killing? And why does the government keep interfering in Monk’s investigation?

Writing in England at the turn of the 20th century, G.K. Chesterton was dubbed the "prince of paradox" for addressing serious questions with his light, whimsical style. In this classic allegory, which has captivated generations since it was first published in 1908, Chesterton tackles such profound concepts as honor, truth, and God with insightful humor and colorful enigma.

A party of hunters stumbles upon a desiccated human hand, a feisty grandmother meets an untimely death in her own kitchen, and the broken remains of a World War II-era transport plane emerge from the face of a calving glacier. It's all in a day's work for Sergeant Liam Campbell of the Alaska State Troopers. And 60 years ago is like yesterday.

A standalone novel from the author of the classic Australian Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte mystery series. Harry Tremayne, a policeman, goes to an isolated valley in the remote Murchison region of Western Australia to find his brother - who vanished a month earlier while investigating the murder of a police detective. Do the gold smugglers at Breakaway House hold the answers to the mystery? First published as a serial in the Perth Daily News in 1932, the real setting for Breakaway House is Mt Magnet, about 580km north of Perth, deep in gold country.

It should have been an easy score - a suburban house on a quiet cul-de-sac, with the owners scheduled to be gone all night. But career burglar George Patniks has chosen the wrong time to go breaking and entering, because tonight Harvey Rozier will murder his wife. Patniks is the only witness to the brutal killing, but, of course, he can't go to the police.

Brighton, 1882: Albert Moscrop spends his holiday peering at beachgoers through a telescope, piecing together disarmingly trivial observations into a compelling drama for his own amusement. A keen student of human nature, Moscrop concentrates his interest on one particular family - the Protheros, especially the beautiful Zena Prothero, whose husband appears to take her for granted. Moscrop gradually moves into the circle of the Prothero family, only to become involved in a sensational murder.

September 1878. One night, as the pleasure boat The Princess Alice makes her daily trip up the Thames, she collides with the Bywell Castle, a huge iron-hulled collier. The Princess Alice shears apart, throwing all 600 passengers into the river; only 130 survive. It is the worst maritime disaster London has ever seen, and early clues point to sabotage by the Irish Republican Brotherhood, who believe violence is the path to restoring Irish Home Rule. For Scotland Yard Inspector Michael Corravan, born in Ireland and adopted by the Irish Doyle family, the case presents a challenge.

USA, 1958. President Joseph McCarthy sits in the White House, elected on a wave of populist xenophobia and barely‑concealed anti‑Semitism. The country is in the firm grip of McCarthy's Hueys, a secret police force evolved from the House Un-American Activities Committee. Hollywood's sparkling vision of the American dream has been suppressed; its remaining talents forced to turn out endless anti‑communist propaganda.